Parental Leave Policy

[drresident8288]

I am a third year resident in a four year program, currently expecting my second child in June. I've seen that ACGME and our GME office has posted a policy stating six weeks of paid parental leave. When I went to submit the request, my program coordinator as well as the contact at the GME office informed me that while I'm allowed to take six weeks, only three are considered paid parental leave and the other three must come out of my vacation/sick time. Does this sound right? My understanding was they were supposed to offer six weeks, and you could use your annual/sick leave to extend if you wanted to take a longer leave.

Offering someone three weeks of parental leave sounds insane to me. My initial plan was to use the six weeks and then take 3-4 weeks of vacation/sick time that I've accrued to make a 9-10 week maternity leave, with some time off still left over for the year as I know I'll be getting called to pick up my child from daycare for various illnesses over the first year. I had 13 weeks off with my first child and I genuinely cannot grasp the idea of going back to work 6 weeks after having this baby. I guess this is just a "welcome to medicine" wake up call.

If it matters, this will be my first paid parental leave as my other child was born before residency. I do not mind making up time missed from rotations and graduating later if necessary.

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[NotAProgDirector]

Unfortunately, yes.

The ACGME description of their policy is here: ACGME Answers: Resident Leave Policies

In short, your program must give you (and every resident) a 6 week fully paid leave for any medical / parental / caregiver issue once during your training. However, they only require that you then have 1 additional week off available. So, if your program gives you 4 weeks of vacation, they are allowed to require you to use 3 weeks of vacation if they wish. If your program only offers 3 weeks of vacation, then they must pay you for 4 weeks + 2 weeks of vacation. Not all programs will do this -- some may decide to just give you 6 weeks of paid leave on top of your vacation.

In any case, you can take unpaid time if you can afford to do that. So you could take 6 weeks of paid leave (including 3 weeks of vacation), and then another 4-5 weeks of unpaid leave - if that's a viable financial option for you. Your program must agree to this as it's an FMLA leave, so you are guaranteed 12 weeks of unpaid time.

Whether or not you need to make up things missed is up to the specialty board, and up to your program. Each board has a maximum amount of time you can miss, after which you'll need to make it up at the end.

Best of luck, and I hope you find a solution you're happy with.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

In an interesting twist of fate, if you take your vacation now before you have the baby, they will probably need to give you 6 weeks of paid leave. It's a crazy outcome of this rule. It's one of the reasons we just give people a 6 week leave on top of vacation, both because it's the right thing to do and to avoid these types of shenanigans.

 

[RangerBob]

In an interesting twist of fate, if you take your vacation now before you have the baby, they will probably need to give you 6 weeks of paid leave. It's a crazy outcome of this rule. It's one of the reasons we just give people a 6 week leave on top of vacation, both because it's the right thing to do and to avoid these types of shenanigans.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you also only allowed to miss four weeks in a given PGY year before you need to extend the length of your training to compensate?

I recall some residents having to take less vacation in subsequent years to compensate so they could graduate on-time and thus start fellowship on-time.

Practically speaking this is only an issue for those who need to start a fellowship July 1, but most fellowship programs tend to be pretty flexible

 

[gutonc]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you also only allowed to miss four weeks in a given PGY year before you need to extend the length of your training to compensate?

I recall some residents having to take less vacation in subsequent years to compensate so they could graduate on-time and thus start fellowship on-time.

Practically speaking this is only an issue for those who need to start a fellowship July 1, but most fellowship programs tend to be pretty flexible

Will depend on the residency and the particular program's setup. Some places will let you do a "research" rotation for that extra time, or just take away elective/research time later on (or before) and substitute core rotations in place of them.

There are a million ways to make it work.

 

[HemeOncHopeful19]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you also only allowed to miss four weeks in a given PGY year before you need to extend the length of your training to compensate?

I recall some residents having to take less vacation in subsequent years to compensate so they could graduate on-time and thus start fellowship on-time.

Practically speaking this is only an issue for those who need to start a fellowship July 1, but most fellowship programs tend to be pretty flexible

I *think* (but could be wrong) that this was addressed with the recent ACGME policies and people are supposed to graduate on time, but I do think it might also be left up to the specific specialty boards.

 

[mistafab]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you also only allowed to miss four weeks in a given PGY year before you need to extend the length of your training to compensate?

I recall some residents having to take less vacation in subsequent years to compensate so they could graduate on-time and thus start fellowship on-time.

Practically speaking this is only an issue for those who need to start a fellowship July 1, but most fellowship programs tend to be pretty flexible

I’ve had several people in my program take unexpected life breaks from residency and graduate on time. Some for multiple months.

In the end, as OP will figure out, it comes down to flexibility, willingness, and creativity of the PD. The PD ultimately has complete control on their own interpretation of requirements and what they are willing to do for trainees. There is also a factor of how much slop is in the gears, I.e. larger programs may be more flexible.

For instance, my PD gave required parental leave, but also shifted around some elective time for some folks to keep them paid/insured but not have to be at the hospital for additional time after.

Some flexibility will also be dependent on the specialty itself as well. Some may give you “research time” to keep you paid but also not require your physical presence.

It’s not fair, but often people are more important than rules. Especially true when picking a boss.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

Already mentioned, but how much time you can miss before needing to make it up is very specialty dependent. In IM for example, you can miss 3 months total including vacation. However, the ABIM defines a month as 5 weeks. So if you have 4 weeks of vacation, you can still miss three weeks. But wait, there's more! The ABIM also allows PD's (actually it's the CCC) to shorten training by one month. Which is 5 more weeks. So you can actually miss 8 weeks without being extended.

 

[mvenus929]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you also only allowed to miss four weeks in a given PGY year before you need to extend the length of your training to compensate?

I recall some residents having to take less vacation in subsequent years to compensate so they could graduate on-time and thus start fellowship on-time.

Practically speaking this is only an issue for those who need to start a fellowship July 1, but most fellowship programs tend to be pretty flexible

It depends on the residency program and the specialty board.

For instance, ABP now has a policy that you can waive a 8 week leave (in addition to vacation) for personal or family care (so parental leave policy would fit) if the clinical competency committee does not have any concerns about your competency nearing graduation. The waiver can't be granted more than 3 months before the original end date of the program.

Sadly, this went into effect after I graduated fellowship, so I had to extend my fellowship by a week for a medical leave I took--which was just kinda annoying.

Composition of our trainee's leave is usually a mix of sick leave and vacation time--our trainees are employees of the hospital, so get the same sick time that everyone else gets and typically don't use it, so a sizable chunk of maternity leave can be made up of sick time before needing to use up vacation.